Thread by @PubliusorPerish

So I just noticed that it's been 4 months since I quit my VAP a year early and started a non-academic editing job.

I spent most of the last decade working hard to win the lottery of a TT academic teaching job. I'm glad I didn't!

A 🧵 for grad students figuring out what's next.

Some observations before I start: I have benefited from a lot of luck and privilege. Hundreds of people applied for the VAP gig I had, and most of them would have done a great job I'm sure. It paid well, which gave me some cushion to take a risk.

Not everyone can.

(I'm not going to talk about why I left that job, because they're more complicated than twitter can handle. It wouldn't be fair to lots of good people to condense this for twitter, because really it was a matter of complex systems doing what they were designed to do.)

Suffice it to say, though, that I needed to leave.

So I resigned, and spent three *really difficult* months writing resumes, cover letters, and doing dozens of interviews. While teaching three classes. During a pandemic.

I didn't sleep very well.

I'd wake up at 3am thinking "What if they ask 'Why are you leaving teaching?'"

Eventually, all of that exhausting labor combined to land me a solid job offer. I would say I feel lucky, but I think my current employer is lucky to have me in a lot of ways.

If I'm lucky in any way, it was in having the foresight as a grad student to advocate for myself and build a decent resume related to editing and publishing.

I get to work remotely, which is great for myself and my family. It was also reasonable given the nature of the work.

I was nervous to be working for a for-profit academic publisher. There's a lot of suspicion out there. I remember a big-name historian once describing how a colleague scoffed at grad students taking corporate jobs, saying "We ought not be training servants of global capitalism.”

Really pretty extraordinary, though, how much better my life has been as a servant of global capitalism compared to my experience as a grad student and (relatively privileged) professor. That's really the point of this thread.

So, let me list the ways…

1- I was trained to do my job. Previously, never more than a one-day “orientation” teaching event. I was expected to learn how to edit, write, and research through observation and osmosis.

My new employer paid me for two weeks to figure out my new job and ask questions.

2- My manager supports me. I met with her 1/2x a day during training to unpack things and ask questions. We built a solid professional relationship during that time, which has subsequently been really helpful.

Nothing like that could have happened in grad school.

I had an *incredible* advisor, about whom I have zero complaints. More than one grad student in my dept. said they wished they had my advisor as theirs. I was lucky.

But any advisor's attention is understandably divided. How could it be otherwise? She was doing 3-4 jobs at once: teacher, advisor, service work, and research. She also had a life of her own. It's impossible! I wouldn't have managed half as well as her.

3- I learned that the people I would be working with are every bit as smart and thoughtful as the academics I used to work with. Because of a totally unfair prejudice, this was sort of a surprise. I didn't think I'd fit in. I thought I'd be too intellectual and idealistic.

Nope. If anything, they have given much more thought to the impact of what they do on the world than I have. I have a lot to learn.

And maybe that's a feature of the publishing industry. Probably not the same on Wall Street. But it's notable to me.

(To be fair, I did interview with some companies whose values were clearly far from mine. I'm ~95% sure I could have landed a higher-paid job with another company, but I pulled out because I had my current job's offer and because I didn't trust that company)

4- Since I started this job, I have slept better than since I was a first-year grad student with a five-year funding package in front of him. Not having to worry about the immediate future has helped me rest better than I have in years.

5- (related to #4) In my new job, I have a clear relationship between my performance and my career outcomes. If I work hard and do alright, I'm confident I can keep my job indefinitely or even advance.

I had no such sense in academia, where hard work did not create opportunities

To be clear, I worked *really* hard as an academic. I have published, or will soon published, a book, six peer-reviewed articles, two book chapters, a pedagogy essay, and many op-eds and short articles.

I worked really hard as a teacher and got (admittedly flawed) great evaluations. My students learned.

But after having taught around 20 solo courses, I was observed three times. It's impossible for anyone other than myself and my students to know if I am an effective teacher.

So there was no relationship between my effectiveness as a researcher or teacher and my retention. At no point in teaching for five institutions did anyone tell me, or even hint that, being an excellent teacher would lead to a permanent position.

6- I think I might have been a better writer, editor, and researcher since leaving academia. I miss library/database access, but I don't miss the exhaustion of teaching.

These days, when I finish work I still have energy to think and write and edit.

I've done an awful lot of work since leaving academia to send my book and several other projects off. It's been fun! And it's not been difficult to remain engaged with important developments in my field.

It's all uncompensated work, but it's still important to me.

7- I now have a defined work schedule. Once I finish, I can consistently spend times writing, reading, and revising if I wish to do so. I can also spend mornings before work and lunch breaks working on those projects, if I decide to do so.

8- I get real vacation time that isn't related to conferences, archival research, or the bare minimum of holidays. My job has a generous PTO (Paid Time Off) policy that my manager encourages me to take full advantage of. And I will.

When I was a grad student, I thought of a non-academic job as a failure ("alt-ac" and all that). And I'm here to say that a lot of academic jobs will make you miserable, and a lot of non-academic jobs will allow you to flourish. I think I got lucky, but that was my experience.

As a grad student, I mostly saw two kinds of people: TT folks who portrayed their "success" as inevitable OR I saw non-TT folks who were embittered by their experiences.

My experience doesn't fit in those categories. I enjoyed my time in academia, and I'm really glad it ended.

I feel certain that almost all of the TT jobs I had any infinitesimally small chance to land would have been hugely unpleasant in the long term.

Grad students: please, please remember that what academia frames as a failure is more often an overwhelming success.

* will soon publish

* it's more complicated...